Well, what a nice chance to spend some real quality time with the Principessa the past few days.
First, she let me weep all over her on Wednesday night when I was feeling glum. It was nice to be able to do that -- then she got down to brass tacks and offered to lend me a few buckeroos to get me over this disgusting financial hump. Then of course I went and had some sort of social-phobia panic attack when I saw her on Thursday night and ran away from her and her friends. Weird, right? I realized that for all of my boosterism about "you are not your job!" deep down, I really haven't believed that.
I wrestled with that one for a while -- and came to realize that I do garner some of my identity from the mere fact of having a job. The idea of sitting at a table with strangers and answering the innocuous question, "So, what do you do?" and not having a definitive answer sent me into a complete panic.
In the meantime, the crying seems to have cleansed me somewhat, and enabled me to start crawling out of the hole I fell into.
Sunday night I went to the P's hotel and we got deli sandwiches and sat and yakked for a couple of hours about everything and nothing. We're both hyper-articulate and really, really funny Oriental girls. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.
Yes, I still call myself "Oriental." I mean, I am, right?
So, over the course of our meandering conversation, I pondered this: What must it be like to live in New York City and go to the bat mitzvah of a 13-year-old Chinese girl named Lauren Feinberg? Can an adopted Chinese girl even BE bat mitzvahed? Doesn't your mother have to be Jewish or something like that to be considered Jewish? Do the girl's adoptive parents have to get special dispensation from the rabbi?
It's a puzzlement.
We went to Pete's Tavern afterward to meet W who, frankly, acted like a complete asshole to the bartender. I guess if someone in the group is going to get a loogie in his food, I'd rather it not be me, but honestly, CrankyPants should have just gone home and not inflicted himself on us. When he acts like that, it takes every ounce of self-control I have not to call him by his father's name.
2 comments:
Reform rabbis are usually pretty liberal. I don't have a Jewish mother, yet cuz I raised my kids Jewish and gave them a Jewish education, they are considered Jews (in Reform). The rabbi even joked that my taking a series of classes and having a b'nai mitzvah ceremony counted as an "unofficial conversion." Cute, but that's not going to fly in Lakewood.
"What must it be like to live in New York City and go to the bat mitzvah of a 13-year-old Chinese girl named Lauren Feinberg?"
You know, I have to admit that's one question I've never pondered before. But probably the bigger question is, how does Lauren Feinberg feel about her name? :-)
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